MP3s, Botox, bottled water, e-shopping

Census calculates cravings of our time

MILWAUKEE — We crave the constant stream of music from MP3 players and the age-defying jolt of Botox injections.

We drink more bottled water than milk, barbecue more than we bake and spend more than twice as much on prescription drugs as sporting goods.

This is America in all its numerical glory, as revealed in the Census Bureau's 2008 Statistical Abstract of the United States.

First published in 1878, the abstract is the statistical guide to the "social, political and economic organization of the United States." The new edition, released Thursday, features almost 1,000 pages of facts and figures that provide a snapshot of a country in constant change.

It takes census experts 10 months to bring together an array of statistics, and they're on constant watch for new numbers that illuminate new trends in a country of 300 million people.

"I've been working on the abstract for more than 30 years," said Lars B. Johanson, chief of the Statistical Compendia Branch. "There is a very simple reason for that. We are working on so many different subjects, and the work never gets boring."

Johanson and his staff compile information on products that didn't exist a decade ago and dig into numbers that reveal the way Americans live.

Factory sales of MP3 players rose from $424 million in 2003 to a projected $5.9 billion in 2007, while sales of digital TVs tripled from $8.7 billion in 2003 to a projected $26.3 billion.

America appears to be getting a giant face-lift, with the total number of cosmetic procedures doubling between 2000 and 2006. More than 11.4 million cosmetic procedures were performed in 2006, including 3.1 million Botox injections, which nearly tripled over that time. Also, breast augmentation procedures for women nearly doubled.

"In this very competitive world, people are driven to look as good as they can for their given age," said George Korkos, a cosmetic surgeon in Waukesha, Wis. "Even in Milwaukee, there are a significant amount of cosmetic surgeries."

We shopped till we dropped online, with $93 billion in retail sales recorded as e-commerce in 2005, a 2.5 percent drop in the bucket compared with the total of $3.7 trillion in retail sales.

Yet for all the excitement surrounding a digital future of entertainment and shopping, we still engage in age-old leisure activities. In 2006, 41 million adult Americans baked, 74 million barbecued and 5.7 million flew kites. More adults played computer games (43 million) than board games (39 million), while 6 million participated in fantasy sports leagues.

But, by far, the biggest leisure time activity was dining out - 106 million adults ate in restaurants at least once in 2006.

And in 2004 Americans consumed 22 percent more calories each day - 3,900 - compared with the daily caloric intake in the 1970s.

"The whole idea is that people don't really know how many calories we need vs. how much we eat," said Patti Cobb, chief clinical dietitian at Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee. Cobb blames overconsumption in part on what she calls the "clean plate syndrome."

"As we are depending more on restaurant meals, there is more of a tendency to finish food there than to take it home. We have that perceived value of more is better, and if we are eating meals away from home, we want to get a lot for our money," she said.

From 1980 to 2005, per capita milk consumption dropped 24 percent, from almost 28 gallons per person per year to 21 gallons. Beer consumption during that period fell 12 percent to 21.3 gallons per capita.

Americans drink more than 51 gallons of soft drinks each year, a 53 percent increase from 1980. The rate of bottled-water consumption has increased by more than nine times since 1980 to more than 25 gallons per person.

Doctors are writing more prescriptions than ever, the abstract shows. Prescriptions have increased over the past decade to 3.4 billion annually, a 61 percent increase. Retail sales of prescription drugs jumped 250 percent from $72 billion to $250 billion, while the average price of prescriptions has more than doubled from $30 to $68.

INFORMATIONAL BOX:

How our habits add up

Almost 11.5 million cosmetic surgical and nonsurgical procedures were done in the United States in 2006; women accounted for almost 92 percent.

Botox injections nearly tripled, to 3.1 million procedures, from 2000 to 2006.

Factory sales of MP3 players rose from $424 million in 2003 to nearly $6 billion in 2007, according to projected sales.

From 1980 to 2005, milk consumption nationally has gone down from 27.6 gallons per person per year to

21 gallons, a 24 percent drop.

Beer consumption has also dropped from 24.3 gallons per capita to 21.3 gallons, a 12 percent drop from 1980 to 2005.